


1 sour and large ship

by infinitefuriosa (alternategalaxy)



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Space AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-06-08 00:02:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6830779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alternategalaxy/pseuds/infinitefuriosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a series of oneshots, drabbles and world building moments in the vastness of space, where anyone can make a deal, but life is still a premium, and max is just trying to get by with a bit of petty smuggling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. not quite paradise

**Author's Note:**

> an untidy mash-up of the space smuggler genre. originally posted on tumblr under the same name. 
> 
> warnings: smut?? allusion to smut. really no smut at all, but someone/s gets laid.

The _Interceptor_ makes planetfall in the late afternoon.  
  
It’s a rough descent - always is - but by the time they’re swooping over Joestown, Toast is trading banter with the Port Authority as though it were a leisure cruise. Max lingers at the back of the cockpit, an eye on the settlement below as it swims into focus. With a skilled touch Toast brings them in, permitting a thunk-thump that runs through the hull as _Interceptor_ magnetises to the dock. They’re formally welcomed to the port and the radio chatter ends with a parting shot from his Navigator, who jams a toothpick back between her teeth and undoes her harness.  
  
As the engine cycles down the solar shields fade first, flooding the console with the ruby shine of sunset. Throwing a hand up to shade his eyes, Max catches a matching grimace on Toast’s face as she swings out of the pilot’s chair, bare feet silent on the corrugated metal.  
  
“It’s gonna’ be dusty out there Cap’,” she says, stretching.  
  
“Mm,” Max says, and leaves the cockpit.  
  
By the time he’s clunked down to the cargohold his First Mate is already waiting. Arms folded over a satchel of contraband, there’s a nervous tick in her jaw. It’s subtle, but Val has never liked Joestown. Max doesn’t ask.  
  
Toast joins them a minute later in combat boots and sunglasses, tying a scarf around her hair. Val waits for her to finish before handing over Mr. Pinky, which Toast holsters with a thanks before hitting the controls for the ramp.  
  
There’s a moment of unresponsive silence before it begins to ease open with a long groan, the seams shining with dying sunlight. It’s been weeks since these hinges were asked to work, a distinct whine sounding from the hydraulics as the ramp extends to the ground until it sinks into place with a kick of dust. The _Interceptor_ is settling down for a long rest; Max doesn’t want to be the one to tell her they’re not staying long. She’s a faithful ship but old, prone to vaporising guzzoline before it can even hit the main lines when she runs hot enough. It’s a fault of her engine’s old fashioned configuration, made worse by the outlawing of the very fuel she was built to run on. Atmo is tricky but he knows Toast can handle it.

By modding the guzzoline Nux can keep her in the air, and that’s enough for now.  
  
The pale face of his Stowaway-turned-Blackthumb crops up from the stairwell to the engineroom, slings himself over the rail to yell over the noise of the hydraulics. Toast seems to be the only one who hears it, flipping him a lazy thumbs-up in answer. It’s enough; Nux matches the gesture and disappears back into the depths of the ship. Max lets the kid be - someone has to stay with the Interceptor, and Nux knows the Interceptor well enough to break port and hide her, if he ever has to.  
  
The street outside the Dock is exactly as Toast predicted: dusty. There’s a haze on everything, made worse by regular gusts that wash in from the Sandhollows. Max has barely taken two steps before one swirls to greet him; grit is quick to get in his eyes. Toast claps Max on the shoulder in mock sympathy, leaving him to rue their decision to visit in the middle of the dry season, and splitting off with Val to turn in the job.  
  
Although he is Captain, Max makes no attempt to follow. Business with the Vuvalini thrives in his absence.  
  
–  
  
Max pushes his way through the congestion of Joestown’s heart, past the headless statue meant to commemorate the founder, noting newly painted shopfronts and a cleaner-faced population than their last visit. Every time the Immortan expands his empire this little port cycles through a new boom, and clearly they’re in the middle of a big one. But it’s not long before the prosperity thins, and the smell of poor drainage in late summer begins to creep through the air. Brothels are the first to appear, but soon there’s an abundance of dive bars and street vendors too, tucked between crooked buildings and peeling paint.  
  
A little slower for the stiffness planetfall always grants his knee brace, Max keeps on.  
  
Three blocks from the port Max passes a pair of streetwitches (woman and granddaughter? Probably.), watching over a cart full of talismans.  There’s a gaggle of Warboys lounging nearby, eyeing off the shop and no doubt looking for a solution to their collective boredom. The older woman is already rolling up her sleeves.  
  
Max doesn’t believe in magic, not this kind, but he changes streets a block early anyway.  
  
–  
  
Unwilling to make any new deals until he hears from Val, Max writes off the rest of the afternoon. He settles in at the Beetle Bar, so named for the beetle on the roof that someone has lovingly crafted out of space junk. Canvassing for rumours between pots of rotgut, Max realises about two drinks in there’s an unforunate number of Warboys around him. But then Joestown has always attracted an uncanny number of them, considering the Citadel has long since moved to orbit a different planet.  
  
When the rotgut turns his tongue numb and his limbs have softened Max pushes away from the bar, follows the directions up to his lodgings. The room on the other side of his door is uninspiring, little more than a dusty box. There’s a sink in one corner and a grimy window over the bed, too small to fit much more than an arm through. The only source of light is from a worn wallscone, throwing murky shadows on the walls.  
  
He’s had worse.  
  
Max sheds his jacket and kills the light, but only after he’s certain there’s no streetrat lurking under the bed. He settles under the window where the desert breeze can kiss his neck, and tries to relax.  
  
This is how she finds him.  
  
In the dark of the room the door eases open with an uneven creak, and there’s a soft clomp of boots  followed by the click of the door’s lock, securing their privacy. His eyes have adjusted well enough to the gloom to pick out her distinct silhouette, her careful approach to the bed.  
  
Max has already swung his legs over the edge, sitting up to greet her. She leans in, and nothing will ever stop the zip of fear down his spine, the brief terror that it’s not her, it’s a trap, he will die – until a wash of warm air by his ear turns it to electricity and she whispers a greeting. “Fool.”  
  
Max licks his lips. “Fury,” he answers. It’s a petname; there is a reason they do not do this aboard his ship. (Or hers. He thinks she has one.)  
  
The tightening of her fingers against Max’s shoulder is the only warning before she straddles him, and just like that this woman is further into his space than any other human is ever allowed. He grips her instinctively, digs into the tight muscles of her abdomen. Fury is all muscle, coiled tension and raw strength, honed by a thousand days of survival. She is a canvas of scar tissue and Max has mapped it carefully, paying extraordinary attention to the details of a woman he’s never seen by daylight.  
  
This is how she finds him, and this is how he knows her.  
  
–  
  
Somewhere in the early hours of the morning the bed dips, the door creaks, and Max stirs long enough to open one eye and watch her disappear. When dawn breaks over a half empty bed he is unsurprised - they take turns, and he will be the one to leave next time.  
  
Max washes, leaves, and spends most of the walk back to the ship thinking too much about the grind in Fury’s voice when she doesn’t want to beg.  
  
He is not expecting it to crackle over the ship-to-ship intercom two weeks later, a bristling Pirate’s Rig on their tail.  
  
—


	2. cosmic castaway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> nux is a scavboy, and slit is his partner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another piece of this space AU 'verse. please note that this fic is mostly an exercise in world building, and is not told chronologically. and as such this is earlier in the timeline than the previous chapter. 
> 
> thankyou especially to fadagaski for helping with the beta, and to the slack group overall for pushing me to post WIP work in the first place!

To the cue of a green-coded alarm the Immortan’s army of scavs swarm towards the dock, grabbing space suits and helmets and gear sticks from the stations they pass. It’s a path that leads them to the garage of the Citadel’s great fleet, and like a wave of ants they course towards the single-pilot pods lining the farthest jetty.

Nux, helmet in one hand and gear stick in the other, drops into his particularly bashed-up pod and cinches the stick into place. While he pulls his helmet on the pod seals itself, switching to life support systems independent of the _Citadel_ itself. His leg is already jigging with excitement - everyone loves a scav run, and _this one_ has Buzzards.

The flashing lights switch from green to orange, warning lights thrown across the array of pods and flyers and tugs that fill the bay. They’re jettisoning soon, and there’s a mad scramble for the last of the scavs to settle themselves before the dock doors open.

With an eye on the swirl of activity through the smeared glass of his windshield, Nux watches the assortment of riders strap themselves to the back of the pods, helmets and oxygen tanks in accompaniment. A series of thumps overhead tells him Slit is doing the same.

A tinny voice sounds from somewhere overhead, echoing around the bay and crackling through Nux’s suit-to-suit system at the same time.

_Jettison in one-five seconds. Jettison in one-five seconds._

The orange lights turn to red, the last of the pods hissing their way to a ready state. The gangways are still, silent, the rush of workers settled on their new task and next destination. Nux hunches over his controls, blue eyes focused on the great metal doorway between them and open space.

_Approaching site, prepare. Approaching site, prepare._

With a whine and a groan the mouth of the _Citadel_ begins to open, the blackness of space peering between the rows of teeth. Nux’s leg jigs faster. He can see the edges of the site already, the listing gunship and the spiral of a destroyed fleet. There is a hive of activity already, red and spiky pods criss-crossing it in the frenzy typical of Buzzards.

His blood _sings_.

The doors retract completely; the countdown beeps through his suit and a hundred others.

_5_

_4_

_3_

_2_

_Launch._

With a soft hiss lost in the rush of launching, the magnetised clamps release and the pod lurches into the grip of space. Nux, tight around the rotting controls, nudges the pod out of the bay and towards their target: the great carcass of a Ceph-class gunship, circled by the lazy orbit of battle detritus.

There's an enthusiastic pattern of thumping on the roof of his pod - Slit, strapped to the outside, and ever desperate to go faster. On the verge of throttling, Nux does it anyway, but not without a slight kick at the brakes, just to throw him a little. A crackle of cursing on the S2S splits a new grin on Nux’s face. Slit is the rider, lest he forget, and pilots are given their sticks for a _reason_.

With the skill of years of practice - he was _born_ on these scavenger routes - Nux dips them in and around the floating shards of gunship armor and the scorched remains of its jetfleet, ripped to shreds by the infamous _Rig_. They'd gotten here too late to see the battle, but he's seen one before, and the deadly leviathan of a ship has left a mark on everything they skim pass. His memory's full of bright laser fights when there's more thumping on the roof, but this time with the unfriendly accompaniment of Slit’s angry yell.

Nux leans forward over his controls to see the ball-shaped pod ahead - like theirs, but a little faster, a little bigger, spiked at the sides.

Buzzards.

He doesn't need his shrieking lancer to inspire a sharp thrust forward.

Whether there are more out there, he doesn't stop to check; with a dip and a swerve that gives them cover to get closer, Nux brings them up on the ass of the poachers and Slit stops yelling long enough to hurl a grenade at them. It takes skill, out here, and he'll never stop being impressed by the neat bullseye, and the glorious destruction of the Buzzard-pod's windshields. The pilot's thrown out of his seat, thrown further by the explosion, and Slit hurls another to finish the job.

With a shout of victory Nux sweeps through the debris, pulls up long enough for Slit to detach and pod-jump. He clocks the second, shell-shocked Buzzard when he lands. The fight is rough and raw, but Nux stays out of it, circling what's left of the pod to look for anything they can take. It looks like they were headed towards the same site, rather than finishing a job - and the only decent looking oxygen tank has a split in it now.

A thunk tells him that Slit's back, and Nux cuts away, his eyes peeled for any more of the fuckers.

He spies another scav-buzzard scuffle on the port side of the gunship, one pod chased by two others, but leaves them to sort themselves out. Half-lives can only ride for so long on the outside, and they need to get into the shielded safety of the hull.

Nux brings them to a stop above where the blueprints marked the armory to be, a grin on his face when he sees the vault door is cracked, but sealed. It hasn’t been looted, not yet.

Salvage armory goods, that’s _their_ job.

Slit is already drifting to the bottom of the corridor by the time Nux secures his tank and follows. With the guts of the ship ripped out there's not even emergency lights, and his own helmet light flickers in and out as they descend. Slit's is steadier, but it flashes right and left as the man tries to take in all the details he can.

The vault door looms to greet them, crooked in a warped frame but still solid. It’s only armory goods, not cargo, and certainly not _precious_ cargo - with luck they’ll get through easy.

The flickering of his helmet light catches a gleam in Slit’s hand. Nux hits the bottom in time to grab at the grenade he’s holding.

His scav-partner snarls, bristling immediately. “We gotta’ get in there!”

“We don’t know what’s inside,” Nux argues, S2S crackling. “It might not be stable!”

“I’ll take the chance!”

Nux makes another grab at the grenade - and sees, just a second too late, the pair of Buzzards launching at them from the shadows of a junction doorway, a snarl spitting across the S2S. Nux flicks his magnets on and drops, immediately, to the floor of the corridor.

Propelled by their own inertia, the Buzzard aiming for him can’t pivot fast enough for course-correction. Nux de-mags and grabs at a foot as it sails bye, and is nearly kicked in the face for his effort. He barely escapes the grip of the second one, throws a hard headbutt instead.

What follows is a scrappy fight, compounded by the tight space and four desperate people. Nux holds his own well enough for a man whose strength depletes quickly, but he’s panting when he finally throws one off. Watching the man spin away, Nux spins to help Slit - only for the second to t-bone him, full force.

Thrown into the wall Nux kicks as hard as he can, separating them, giving Slit the space he needs to throw punch the moment he’s close enough. There’s a matching uppercut at the first intruder, gloved fist clipping that helmet with enough force to make the Buzzard’s head bounce inside it.  They spin away, and there’s a shriek from the grenade as Slit arms it.

 _Shit_.

Nux launches himself back up the corridor, leaving Slit to throw the bomb at their competitors. It’s not _meant_ for space this small, if he doesn’t --

He grabs at the first doorway, some part of him registering that it’s the same one the Buzzards attacked them from. Dead ships are mazes - what if there’s more - _later_.

The scavboy slings into it, Slit nearly trampling him in an effort to do the same. It’s a rough scramble; Slit’s boot scrapes against the shoulder of his suit. Nux shoves him hard against the doorframe, ignoring the snarl.

They make it just in time for the whoosh of heat and light to race up the corridor, hurling the Buzzards with it.

There’s a beat of silence that follows, and another, and they know there won’t be a retaliation.

Slit’s the first to stick his head back out into the freshly blackened corridor. He cackles, which Nux takes to be a good sign, and launches himself into a new drift to the bottom. Nux brushes away splintered glass from a Buzzard helmet and follows. He pointedly does not look up to the far end, where he knows the drifting corpses have stuck.

The vault door is almost out of its frame now, the metal around it buckled from the explosion. It doesn’t take much for them to shift it and swing into the vault beyond. A once organised room has become near-chaos, rows of blasters and paraphernalia thrown about the room.

It’s not long before they have two weighty bags of scav’d bounty, the room stripped for everything they can carry. With a rod threaded through the bag handles and balanced on their shoulders, they begin the ascent.

There are no more Buzzards, this time, though a small lightshow flickers through the splintered windows they pass. At one point there’s the stinging blast of a laser striking the outer wall and Slit, already twitchy with the background noise of battle, almost throws the stick off his shoulder to race on ahead. Nux feels that rush too, the spike of adrenaline and the heat of battle, and they start climbing a bit faster, jumping from ledge to ledge to accumulate momentum.

They break free of the gunship, steel, scorched corridors falling away in favour of the vastness of the outside. There’s a furious chase going on overhead, a pack of Buzzard pods chasing the scav sentinel down the gunship’s starboard flank. Their own pod is drifting at the end of its short tether, right where they left it, and together the men bounce as fast as they can towards it. The bags of loot are thrown behind Nux’s seat, followed by Nux himself, the rod _snicking_ back into place beside Slit’s oxygen tank. To the noise of Slit’s urgent drumming Nux detaches the pod and they swerve, banking hard to join the scuffle.

Nux throws everything he can into the catch-up game.

Eyes wide and intent on the ass of those red pods, there’s a wild grin on his face when he sees that the plight of the Sentinel’s drawn more attention. Scav pods all across the site beginning to do the same. Slit is yelling something - the S2S is pure crackle, punctuated with the occasional but barely discernable slur. Nux tunes most of it out but it still fuels the rising blood, the scent of the pursuit in him as he banks again, cuts narrowly between the carcasses of a pair of fighter pods, and takes up a trajectory that will T-bone them into those Buzzards.

And then, Slit fucks up.

They’re past the three-quarter mark, those red asses getting a hell of a lot nearer, Slit almost breaking the S2S with the amount of noise he’s shoving through that microphone, when a new pod, bright red but streaked with blast damage cuts them off.

Nux course-corrects with a hard curse, but it’s Slit who grabs a grenade and hurls it at the target.

It misses - by a lot - and at this speed Nux has about five seconds to notice the live ammunition in their path. He kills the thrusters, banks as hard as he can with an unprotected rider, drops - and they skate on by with the mercy of the Immortan on their backs.

He yells something at Slit but in the heat of the moment the S2S is just noise, abuse and slurs thrown throw the microphones at either end, neither repentant and equally pissed. It’s a dumbshit way to die, and when Nux kicks in the thrusters he feels the jerk almost slip off, and feels a little better for it.

They’ve lost momentum, his skilled navigation compromised by the stupidity of adrenaline, but the scuffle has curled away from the gunship and through the heart of the debris, a risky move for the Sentinel ship but splintering the Buzzards for scav-pods to pick off. With a snarl in his throat Nux accelerates, and when the same Buzzard from before strafes into their line, Slit strikes. It’s on, then, the red pod scurrying ahead of them, smoke and sparks trailing from a pair of thrusters, a dangerous crack in the windshield. Buzzard pods seat two, a gunner and a nav, and sometimes there’s a third riding on the roof like _Citadel_ boys. This one’s lost its rider already, the snapped tether streaming behind them. There’s one for each of them then.

It banks and turns to angle sight-lines, but Nux is the better pilot, and sticks on their ass. Slit throws another grenade, and while it doesn’t make contact it brushes just close enough to explode anyway, prompting the red pod to twist away, straight into the blasters of the Sentinel.

It’s a white-hot bullseye from the defense ship and the pod shatters, split apart like an atom. Nux whoops in delight, the S2S a buzz in his ear, giving up completely on any attempt to actually convey Slit’s war cries.

Then Nux’s blue eyes go very, very wide.

He hauls on the gearstick and banks, hard, turning the armoured side of the pod against the debris hurtling towards them, trying to shield himself and his rider at the same time. He can hear Slit cursing, yells at him to shut it.

Despite Nux’s best efforts, there’s no stopping the trajectory of red-painted pieces of ship, and what is probably an arm, from slamming into the side of their pod. He knows, about two seconds before the system starts shrieking at him, that the thrusters on that side are busted. Nux snarls, grits his teeth, and drops into the shelter of a piece of dislodged gunship armour. The rest of the debris rushes past.

There’s nothing to do but sit for a moment, let the system compensate for itself, vent fuel into the remaining thrusters, shut off leaks, run its automated (though shoddy, and often in need of a kick from a wrench) repair systems. In the midst of this - the warning alarms and the adrenaline and the scuff of battle overhead, he almost misses her - the gracious pale curve of the planet in the background, far beyond the noise.

She is a beautiful thing, marbled with orange and green and a little bit of blue, and for the first time he notices how close the scav site is to the planet, the one permanently habitable rock in this entire damn system.

The inverted face of his rider drops into view over the windshield, and Nux jumps so violently he may be down to a quarter-life.

“Cut out the shine-eye!” Slit snarls, “We got shit to do!”

Nux growls and throws the stick, launching them forward in an uneven lurch while Slit retreats to his post. He has to nav more carefully, the pod strafing without the right combination of thrusters.

He can’t see the Sentinel ship anymore but there’s a dozen dead Buzzards, strewn across the site and at the mercy of white-painted scav pods, riders jumping from one to the next, stripping everything that hasn’t been destroyed. It takes an irritatingly long time, but Nux coaches the pod towards it. When they’re close enough Slit vaults off the roof and onto the nearest carcass.

The S2S is a hum of scavs signalling to each other, pilots circling for good gear and riders grabbing what they can, hauling and throwing and rounding up the bounty. He’s in the middle of watching another scav help his partner wrestles a fuel tank free, a satisfied “Yeah!” cutting through the chatter --

Bright light flares across his windshield.

 

He loses a minute. Maybe more.

When Nux opens his eyes the controls are screaming at him. The S2S is silent.

There’s a scav-pod almost an arm’s length from his own, the thrusters twitching, but doing little else. It’s dented, badly.

The gunship looms overhead, and finally Nux realises they’ve been thrown almost to the other side of the site. He twists a little in his seat - and, yes, there’s the planet.

He forgets, for a moment, how dire this is.

They twist into a lazy spiral, stabilisers fucked, and all Nux can think is how he wouldn’t mind burning up in the atmosphere of that place, if that’s the closest they’re going to get.

 

**Author's Note:**

> this is ... untidy, lol, but it's here. while this is a capture of a moment in time, it is hopefully the first chapter in a series of drabbles, one shots, and worldbuilding. i have a lot to write about!
> 
> a big thankyou to all my fandom friends who helped cultivate these ideas, and especially for sharing fragments of WIPs that helped to push this thing out into the daylight!


End file.
